reverse engineering PR: dodge and dub magazine?

I think I may have stumbled upon a word-of-mouth marketing campaign for Dodge, or for DUB Magazine. Or for both. Here's what we saw.

Some friends and I were out around Union Square in Manhattan one night last week. There was a bit of difficulty choosing a bar that everyone found agreeable, and we ended up walking around for a while.

In front of the Regal there was a really eye-catching car. I mistook it at first for the new 2010 Camaro, but upon closer inspection it was revealed to be a Dodge Challenger. Bright orange, DUB Magazine badging. Gorgeous. Someone remarked that a pristine car like that shouldn't be driven, much less parked on the street in Manhattan (I tend to agree). We talked and gawked over the car for a bit and then renewed our search for a bar.

A couple of blocks away, on 13th St and University, we saw ANOTHER orange Dodge Challenger with DUB Magazine badging. A cosmic coincidence.

Working our way clockwise around Union Square in search of the Old Town Bar on 18th St (a compromise solution), we came across yet another Dodge with DUB badging - this one a white Magnum. And then my friends started doing what they do best: Harith started taking pictures, and Jon started being inadvisedly curious, touching the car and setting off one of the most enthusiastic alarms I've ever heard.

Here's the picture of the Magnum that Harith took as we beat a hasty retreat away from it.

We circled back to the Regal and Harith snapped some pictures of the first Challenger we saw.

Three beautiful cars of the same make parked on the street in downtown Manhattan on a weekend night. A car club meeting? Remarkable happenstance? Being a PR flack myself, I am completely immune to such flights of fancy and I detect the fingerprints of a word-of-mouth campaign. And for what it's worth, one that was completely effective on me, as here I am blogging about it after spending a couple of hours reading online about Dodge Challengers over the past week. Although living in Manhattan, I cannot imagine a scenario where I own an automobile. Sorry, Dodge. Hot car, though.

We never did actually go to a bar. That's another story.

• See some other pictures of the cars here.

• More of Harith's photography on Flickr.

Comments

[jesse]

totally sweet ride bro

[Fernando Rizo]

omg marketing works!

[Harris]

Readers of Fernando's blog: his very masculine revelation of DUB's connection to Chrysler's latest batch of mmusclecars was really just a side plot of that night's over-arching quest for cupcakes at Butter Lane. Don't be fooled.